Doug Bernauer Wisdom: SpaceX & Elon Musk's Secret to Ambitious Leadership

0:05Doug, last week we asked you about your giant idea, building nuclear reactors in a box. This week we're going to talk to you about your leadership style and what you've learned over the years. Maybe we could start at SpaceX. You worked very closely with Elon Musk over the years. What did you learn from Elon in terms of leadership and being a great founder? I learned that your job as a leader really is to have a vision and to press for that vision to happen and actually to push past what sounds reasonable to others. So actually, the job is a little bit to be unreasonable. And the point is, you will discover where is reasonable.

0:42If you go a little bit beyond it and then you walk back, you're not limited by your inertia, by the past, by the decades of the past. And you're instead going, well, I'm going to go to this place that's ridiculous. And this is, I think, how really every great thing happens is you've got somebody being a little bit unreasonable. And it just sounds unreasonable. But then you can walk it back and you can go, you know, I want a rocket with legs. And Elon did that. And we went, you know, and a year later we had that rocket with legs hopping around. out in the middle of Texas. And it was kind of a skeleton crew staffing it because, you know, it wasn't the main event.

1:18There wasn't a customer for that thing. It was just being a little bit unreasonable. And then, you know, it leads to, you know, more rockets ever made by more rockets than ever made by anyone else. Right. And fully recoverable. And even, you know, simultaneously landing, synchronized, simultaneous landing of these rockets. And then everything that came from that right because it reusing the rocket then gives you all this revenue and then generates you know this network of satellites uh but yeah it's the the main thing i think that is interesting to share is like you need to be a little bit unreasonable if you're too unreasonable people go you're no i can't do that and so there's a weird balance to strike where you've got to use that to kind of get them out of the box that they're in and go you know expand the mind and go wow, that is a problem I can actually solve.

2:09Got it. And how have you managed to translate that yourself into Radiant? And how have you got the balance right on being unreasonable enough, but still retaining credibility with your team? It's a day by day thing. I think sometimes I do it right. And sometimes I do it wrong. But I do recall this. And I think I didn't know if you asked me this same question five years ago, I would not have been able to tell you what have I learned. But this is one thing that I really noticed is important to do. Because if I listen to the team and they go, here's what we can do, here's what we can do. And I just stick with that.

2:42Well, we're not really making the future. I have to be a little bit stubborn, a little bit outsider, a little bit further visionary and a little bit unreasonable. And that'll press us. Is there anything from your time at SpaceX that you choose not to bring with you? Anything from Elon style that you've left behind? um i don't know um i mean this is a very hard one to answer because everyone is a different person um and and at a different uh you know a different place in their career i think you know elon started spacex at a place where he's where i'm i'll be like you know now around now maybe so i think it's a little different to try to compare those things um but you know certainly there's a there was more of a uh harshness more of a more of a he has you know elon's person like anyone else in spacex is a company and each piece of it had a sort of different culture um and there were teams that have had cultures that were a bit uh overly aggressive a bit less inclusive so we try to avoid those things of course your cult your culture is i think as self-described one of kind of radical ownership and transparency how would you describe the culture of radiant yeah no absolutely i mean those are the right terms to be using and those things are a crossover from spacex but i i think that they're more just how i feel right uh like when i joined spacex i didn't feel like oh i need to learn this culture i went like oh i'm home like great everybody's super serious and you feel like you're you know special forces like you're you're an elite squad and your goal is to go and be the best at everything to know the most about the things that you need to know about and to go and get things done that will matter to the world that will bring prosperity to the biggest number of people.

4:29Doug, I want to double down on something you just mentioned before there about being a bit of an outsider as a CEO and the benefits that can have. Obviously, with what your experience was at SpaceX, that was quite an unusual example, right? Where Elon's running multiple companies. Do you think that is actually part of the secret sauce there is having even more distance than usual because he's coming between different companies? Is there something in that? It might be. yeah i really like that point i think you might be onto something with that um because then yeah if you're context switching you got an idea from how you've been thinking in this other organization or something you've just seen and you're you're pivoting and going well i've got this i'm hearing these things from people i've there and they're used to working on this problem together but you might have some totally different angle just just from the context switching where you're then like bringing some knowledge and wisdom from this other this other company to the other one that you're running.

5:23So that's obviously one big influence on your leadership style, but it may not be the only one or indeed the most important one. Tell us a little bit more about the mentors you've had over the years and the people whose leadership styles you've drawn on to become a leader yourself. Yeah. I think the biggest one to mention is Hyman Rickover. He's the father of the nuclear Navy. He created the Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine. Actually, it was the first power reactor of any kind. Reactors before that were only made to make weapons materials. And he's not a very well-known figure, I'd say globally, but he's unbelievable.

6:03I think he's also the longest serving naval officer or even longest serving officer period in the United States. I think served into his 80s. And he gave a couple speeches, and those speeches are a huge point of inspiration for me because when you read them, you just hear the passion of a person who will not stop, who's brilliant, who wants to do great things for the world. And he tells you things like, knowledge is not that great end of life. Action is, right? If you know something, if you learn something, that's you, you're drawing in information and you're not giving back. and so your goal is to know enough to then do something and that doing something might even just be get other people to get that knowledge um but there are these couple little speeches by rick over which are a huge inspiration for me fantastic and maybe if we just step back and reflect on your life generally doug and if you had to picture your life in three photographs we'd love to reflect with you on what those three photographs would be what the snapshots would say about you as a person and the wisdom you've accumulated along the way so far yeah well i think you've got it if you're doing a whole life in three snapshots uh you know i want to reserve the last one for for what's happening next uh but you know the first one has to be childhood and like your your story of origin i'm like uh just a kid from kind of out in the middle of nowhere ohio and just always a loved life and been passionate i never had a like a group of friends were my only, I would talk to everybody and, and know everybody.

7:39And, uh, and I was always organizing, you know, I formed, uh, formed bands, learned, learned, taught myself how to play guitar, uh, had played saxophone, uh, like singing too, and music and everywhere I've gone, like in, in my high school and college. And, and, and even later, I've always been an organizer and go like, all right, we're playing in my garage. Like, let's do this. Like every week we'll go out and we'll play shows would you cover songs um so it's that it's that kind of early organizer i was a dungeon master i think when i was 12 years old for dungeons and dragons which wasn't too popular in the 90s but i was like the only one who knew anything about it and so it would draw all these people to me and i would just i was always just making something out of nothing um and yeah so that's the maybe the childhood picture um and then that second picture has to be kind of the transformation you know me which would be me finding SpaceX and going from, you know, just an engineer who was just, you know, full of energy and liked to work on things to one who really took an idea that was Elon's that was unreasonable to others and making it real.

8:42And then doing it on repeat, you know, because it's not only grasshopper, that first rocket with legs, but we did the first grid fins. We did Hyperloop, which is a 4 ,200-foot-long tube vacuum chamber, six feet in diameter. We built in less than a year and pumped down to 1 % atmospheric pressure and then ran an electric vehicle 350 miles per hour in that tube. I made that vehicle too. And then Boring Company. But yeah, I learned how to basically just like on repeat, just like hit these massive wins for someone who I loved working for and really respected. and that I think turned me into what I what I what I'm now which is that third chapter is I want to make the company that makes more nuclear reactors than have ever been made in the past right which at 50 reactors a year that's 10 years and we'd have more reactors than exist in the world I want those to be able to be used for any purpose and to do that because power is prosperity if people have access to power they can do things power is what actually makes us human without electric power or the ability to use that to do things, whatever we want, you only have your muscles.

9:51You have human or animal muscle, or you have motors and power. And I'm a motors and power guy. We're humans. That's what we need to have. So that's what that third frame has to be. Incredible. Well, it started with making songs in your garage in a band. Then you started hacking nuclear reactors in a garage, and next we're going to provide energy to the world. So sign us up for that final chapter. Thanks for joining us so much, Doug. Thank you, Doug. Thanks so much. It's been great.